


Scariest Thing in the Room

by Lissadiane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: High School AU, M/M, School Dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 12:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17601296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissadiane/pseuds/Lissadiane
Summary: High school dances are the devil, but Steve had asked - begged - Bucky to come along, and Bucky’s a sucker for that stupid kid.





	Scariest Thing in the Room

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr, posted here for posterity. 
> 
> A short winterhawk story.

It’s the typical scene -- school gym barely disguised beneath an onslaught of crepe paper streamers and balloons. The DJ has brought along a disco ball and a few racks of laser lights and a smoke machine that Bucky swears to god he’s going to smash to bits if it sets off Steve’s asthma.

That is, if Steve’s awful and uncoordinated attempts at dancing don’t set it off first.

High school dances are the devil, but Steve had asked -- begged -- Bucky to come along, and Bucky’s a sucker for that stupid kid. 

Christ. He needs a goddamn cigarette.

He doesn’t mind being a wallflower -- he thinks that’s the term. Leaning against the wall near the back door and waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip out for a smoke, watching his classmates and their awkward attempts at dancing -- are you a wallflower if it’s by choice rather than necessity?

He’s pretty sure no one wants to risk asking him to dance, not with his glower. The entire student body just about is afraid of him, and that’s the way he likes it. 

Peggy and Steve are dancing -- she looks elegant and graceful as usual, except that she’s laughing at Steve, who’s so uncoordinated, it looks like his arms are going to fly off. Bucky doesn’t mind that she’s laughing -- hell, he’d be laughing too. He’s just glad Steve’s got someone to dance with these days. There had been far too many dances, before Peggy, where Steve would beg Bucky to come along only to end up leaning against the wall with him after whichever girl he’d tried asking to dance turned him down.

Peggy’s different, though. Bucky’d been worried at first, because what’s a gorgeous girl like her doing hanging around with someone like Steve? But then she’d told him that Steve was just about the best guy she’d ever met, and Bucky realized that it was because she saw Steve the way Bucky saw Steve -- not as a small, sickly guy with a temper but as someone brave and strong and fiercely loyal and worth going to the end of the line with.

Steve had said, after he and Peggy first got together, that introducing Peggy to Bucky had been the hardest part, because if Bucky hadn’t liked her, Steve couldn’t have been with her.

Lucky for them both, Bucky had, eventually, loved her.

The music -- a frenetic mess of a dance song -- changes suddenly, the laser lights dimming, the disco ball slowing, and Peggy and Steve snuggle up close as the smoke machine goes into overtime, and this is it. The perfect time to sneak out for a smoke.

Except then a guy gets shoved right in front of Bucky, nearly tripping over his own feet but managing to catch his balance with a scowl over his shoulder at whomever had done the shoving.

Bucky’s already got an unlit cigarette in his mouth when the guy shoves his hands into the pockets of his torn up jeans, hunches his shoulders, and spits, “Do you want to dance with me.”

He doesn’t look up from the floor, and Bucky doesn’t have time for this kind of shit. “What,” he says. “You lose a bet?”

The guy looks up -- but not too far. He’s taller than Bucky, with a shock of messy blonde hair, wide shoulders, narrow everything else, like a puppy who hasn’t grown into his paws. He’s wearing a wrinkled button up shirt that Bucky’s pretty sure is misbuttoned, and there’s a goddamn bandaid over his nose.

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug, still scowling.

He’s got a pretty mouth.

But Bucky still doesn’t have time for people who only talk to him when they lose a bet, because Bucky’s the scariest one in the gym, he knows this, and apparently asking the scary dude in the back corner to dance is someone’s idea of a hilarious dare.

He looks up over the guy’s shoulder, expecting to find a group of guys watching and giggling, but instead meets the narrow-eyed glare of Natasha Romanov.

It’s possible he’s not the scariest one in this gym after all.

And from the way she’s glaring at him, daring him to make one wrong move, Bucky begins to think he ought to have sneaked out for a smoke a little sooner to avoid this whole potentially deadly situation in the first place.

“Listen,” he says, taking the cigarette from between his lips, noticing, as he does, that the guy’s eyes seemed glued there. “I don’t have time for whatever the fuck this is, so no. I don’t want to dance. If you’re looking to prove how big your balls are or whatever the fuck else, maybe ask your friend Romanov to dance -- she’s scarier than I am anyway.”

The guy looks over his shoulder. “She is,” he agrees, distracted. Then he looks back and blinks and says, “Hey, wait, no, it wasn’t that kind of bet, it was the kind of bet where we had a shooting contest in gym today and the loser has to ask their crush to dance -- it’s no big deal, you can still go out and smoke or whatever, you definitely don’t have to dance with me, I just didn’t want you thinking you were some joke or whatever, like ‘I dare you to ask Bucky Barnes to dance because he’ll probably punch you in the face’ or something, who even does that, though I’d appreciate if you didn’t punch me in the face just the same.”

It’s a lot to unpack. It takes Bucky a few seconds, and the longer he stares at the guy, the more fidgety the guy gets, until he looks like he’s about to bolt.

Bucky stuffs the cigarette back in the pack and stuffs the pack back in his pocket and says, “Yeah, okay.”

“Yeah, okay?” the guy squeaks.

Bucky jerks his head at the dance floor. “Song’s half over, you want to do this or not?”

“I. Yes. I do want to do this, absolutely, I just -- _you_ want to do this? With me? You don’t -- I don’t --”

Bucky takes his hand, tugs him out onto the smokey, disco ball dance floor, and the guy’s still babbling when Bucky pulls him in close, slides his hands onto the guy’s hips, and starts swaying.

Dancing is so fucking stupid.

But whatever, he’s doing it, with a stupidly tall, stupidly charming mess of a human being because apparently that human being lost a bet. While shooting in the gym.

“Shooting?” Bucky asks, when the guy stops to take a breath.

“Archery,” he says. “I’m Clint Barton.” The name means nothing to him, and Clint must read that on his face because he grins and says, “I’m our state-wide archery champion? My name’s on a banner, up there.” He points up on the wall and then puts his hand back on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky kinda likes it there.

Bucky glances up. Huh. So it is.

“State champion?” he says.

Clint nods.

“Then how’d you lose the bet?”

Clint’s smile turns shy and crooked and he shrugs before saying, “Probably because I really wanted to dance with you?”

He inches closer, sliding his hands up so his forearms are resting on Bucky’s shoulders, hands on the back of his neck, and Bucky likes that even better than his hands on his shoulders.

“You could’ve just asked,” he says, and the music changes, growing loud and frenetic again. Clint doesn’t step back, so Bucky doesn’t let him go.

“Yeah?” Clint asks, a flirty edge to his grin. “You’re real scary, you know. I needed some plausible deniability.”

Bucky grins at him and Clint beams back at him and it’s like he lights up the stupid room.

“Okay,” Bucky says, finally pulling away. He takes Clint’s hand. “C’mon.”

“Where are we going?” Clint asks, laughing as Bucky tugs him across the gym.

“I wanna introduce you to Steve,” he says. “He’s gonna love you.”

The End


End file.
